Once, I wrote online about Zen and System Dynamics (SD) having things in common. Another writer commented that Zen was an ancient mystical cult that had nothing to do with SD and criticized me for giving SD a bad reputation by suggesting they had anything in common.
Even though experts spent decades teaching System Dynamics to K12 teachers, promoting SD for education and talking to many people about feedback loops, SD remains an academic exercise outside the mainstream, or hidden behind consultants closed doors focused on business process improvement. SD is criticized as not being used or useful in engineering or science.
Below, I have written about my experience with Zen and System Dynamics, but reading this will not mean that you understand either one. You have to experience System Dynamics and Zen for yourself before they mean anything to you. My description of Zen and Koans is not meant to represent their true nature. This is not about Buddhism or any other religion.
The description of Zen that follows is a beginner’s perception, like someone from the outside looking in. By focusing only on the beginner level, this description becomes stuck there in a condition that Zen calls “a worm in the mud.”
The purpose of Koans in Zen and generic structures in SD is strictly pedagogical. A student grapples with a Koan or a generic structure by following a process guided by a trained instructor.
The problem I will address is a lack of understanding of the dynamic processes in the world around us and within ourselves. The purpose of this article is to provide evidence of what Zen and System Dynamics have in common. In the process of describing Zen and SD, experts in SD will find support for teaching SD to others.
The Zen of System Dynamics
Like Zen, System Dynamics is difficult to define. They share many things in common.
While they do not dispense completely with words and writing, Zen and System Dynamics have no dependence on words. System Dynamics models use levels and flows shown as rectangles and pipes on the computer. These are the only two concepts needed to understand why systems work the way they do (Forrester, 1996).
Zen passes from mind to mind outside the approved curriculum, culture and doctrines. System Dynamics also has a history of passing from mind to mind outside the approved curriculum in K12 education. Education reform culture and doctrines require standardized tests, teacher evaluations based on test scores and for-profit education companies. System Dynamics has been taught to K12 teachers outside the approved University curriculum for teachers by those who have mastered the concepts as taught to them by the international experts in System Dynamics.
Zen points directly at the mind. Zen Koans engage the minds of students to resolve a dilemma. System Dynamics points directly at the mental models each of us has in our mind of how we believe the real world works and compares this to dynamic model simulations on a computer. System Dynamics engages the minds of students to resolve the conflict between their own mental model and results of the computer simulations.
Zen is a way of practicing insight to improve our capacity and ability to resolve real dilemmas and live an authentic life. System Dynamics is a way of practicing insight to improve our capacity and ability to communicate our mental models, computer simulation results, and conclusions and decisions to others. Miscommunication results from incongruent communication by one or more parties to a conversation when their mental model does not align with their words or the mental models of others. System Dynamics resolves these dilemmas by engaging everyone in meta-communication about the conflict between the mental models and computer models.
Zen teachings are communicated using short stories and epigrams. Hakuin Ekaku (January 19, 1686 - January 18, 1768) was one of the most influential figures in Japanese Zen Buddhism. Here is the Koan he originated: “You know the sound of two hands clapping; tell me, what is the sound of one hand?”
The student has no dependence on any other words, writing or instruction. The Koan is outside the public education curriculum. The epigram points directly at the mind of the student.
Dynamic models of systems do not depend on any other words or instruction. The dynamic model is outside the public education curriculum that is focused on standardized test results. A model is an epigram in symbols that points directly at the mind of the observer.
A System Dynamics Koan might be: You know how a bathtub works; tell me, how does self-esteem work?
The System Dynamics student has to identify their mental model of how a bathtub works. If they haven’t already, they build a dynamic model and simulate a bathtub. They research how a bathtub works and enter the proper assumptions and equations into the model. They communicate the results and receive feedback. They repeat their steps until they resolve the dilemma of the differences between their mental model and how a bathtub actually works based on a valid and verified dynamic model simulated on the computer. Just like in Zen, learning happens when the student changes their mental model.
This takes a lot of inner work. Just like in Zen, the focus is on what is going on in the mind. Seeing the mental model align with the computer simulation model, so that the student changes their mental model, is like the “Ah-ha!” moment in Zen when a student gains insight into a Koan.
Understanding a Koan requires digging deeper and thinking beyond the words. Understanding a System Dynamics model requires finding balancing and reinforcing feedback loops, shifting loop dominance and time delays. Understanding a Koan or a dynamic model requires insight that does not depend on words, is transmitted outside the standard curriculum and points directly to the mind.
Insight into how the mind works is the path to enlightenment in Zen. Insight, into how to change our mental models using dynamic model simulations on the computer, is the path to learning using System Dynamics.
Beginning
In the beginning, a Zen student repeats the Koan about the sound of one hand clapping over and over again during mediation to focus the mind and body. They use their thinking ability and physical abilities to move their hands to make motions and find out what sounds they can make with one hand. This phase of research can be very creative and entertaining when others participate. The Zen student takes the plain meaning of the words, the literal meaning, to assume that the resolution is a sound and something we hear. The student attempts to guess the one and only one solution. Returning to the Zen master, the student gives their resolution or response. The Zen master dismisses them to try again. This creates doubt in the mind of the student.
A beginning System Dynamics student makes repeated attempts to model a simple system, with specific boundaries, that is a generic structure. They use their thinking and analytical abilities and skills to create a model on the computer and run simulations to get the system to behave in a particular dynamic way as represented by a graph of the results of key variables. The student attempts to complete the assignment so that they get the one correct answer. However a beginning student will struggle with understanding why they are studying SD and why modeling is used. The student comes to the assignment with assumptions and mental models of how things work in the real world. Comparing the modeling of a generic structure to their mental models, they have doubts about whether this has anything to do with the real world.
Koans and Generic Structures
A Koan is a case study that includes an opportunity to focus on duality. When two things are opposite or different, this creates the opportunity to consider how or in what circumstances they might become one. When does one and one become one? This is the common theme in many Koans.
A generic structure, with well defined boundaries, is a case study in System Dynamics that includes an opportunity to focus on feedback loops. When cause and effect are connected then a link between an accumulation and a flow is included in the model that represents a type of feedback found in the real world. In SD, cause and effect become one feedback loop.
The purpose of Koans and generic structures is strictly pedagogical. A student grapples with a Koan or a generic structure, each with well defined boundaries, by following a process guided by a trained instructor.
The Wild Fox Koan
The Wild Fox Koan is an influential Koan story in the Zen tradition dating back as early as 1036 and republished many times since then. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_fox_koan ) In the Koan a student asks, “Does a person who practices with great devotion still fall into cause and effect?” (There are mystical or religious aspects to the story not relevant to our comparison with System Dynamics that will be left out of what follows.)
In the story, a monk answers incorrectly, “No, such a person does not.” After a long time, he asks another monk, "Does a person who practices with great devotion still fall into cause and effect?" And the second monk said, "Don't ignore cause and effect."
A student of the second monk, upon hearing the story, asked, “What if he hadn't given a wrong answer?" The second monk asks the student to approach him, "Come closer and I will tell you." But when the student came closer, the student slapped the monk’s face. Laughing, the monk clapped his hands and said, "I thought it was only barbarians who had unusual beards. But you too have an unusual beard!"
The Wild Fox Koan has many layers within the boundaries of the problem. This is a complex story to unpack, examine and then view as a whole. One thousand years ago, humans did not understand why things happened in the world around them and why humans behaved they way they did in the same detailed ways that we do today. They understood cause and effect, action and reaction. For them this was the simplest explanation for why things happened.
The first lesson is that no matter how devoted you are in your beliefs, you can not ignore cause and effect. Every culture has this basic lesson in their history. For example, “what goes around comes around” or “reap what one sows” or karma. So far this seems like an easy story to understand. However, every student of Zen learns early that duality is a common theme in Koans.
The key word here is “and” because Koans do not say cause “or” effect, they always use “and” to link two words that are opposites. For example, good and bad, right and wrong, birth and death. Koans are a way to create doubt in the mind of the student in order to increase the pressure on them to dig deeper into the meaning of the Koan. By using opposites, the Koan is designed to increase the doubt to the highest level possible.
Self-regulating mechanisms existed at the time Koans were first created and when they were first recorded. Today, we have a word for the combined action of cause and effect. We use the term feedback. Monks used the sound of two hands clapping and a slap on the face to represent the combined action of cause and effect. A question often asked by Zen Masters focuses the student’s attention on two words and asks how they can become one thing. In this case, cause and effect become one feedback loop.
For the ordinary person, the Koan has two conflicting views of causality: falling into cause and effect, or not falling into cause and effect. We all dream of being free from cause and effect and act as if we are separate from cause and effect. But when a person awakens to their true nature, we see the oneness of cause and effect and do not ignore the functioning of cause and effect by imagining cause and effect are two separate things. Thus awakened persons neither "fall into" nor do they "not fall into" cause and effect, they experience cause and effect as one thing: feedback. And because they are one with cause and effect, they do not ignore cause and effect - meaning they do not ignore the feedback loops in natural systems.
The Process
This intellectual and analytical description of the Koan is not a resolution of the Wild Fox Koan, and not a solution nor an answer. Zen is an experience. The experience has been called enlightenment, awakening, a sudden insight, a flash of intuition and many other metaphors. In this way, Zen does not depend on words. Using words does not substitute for the actual experience of meditating using a Koan.
When a student is given the Koan, like Wild Fox or The Sound of One Hand Clapping, they return each time to the Zen Master. The Zen Master listens to the student’s response to the Koan then sends them away to reconsider, and he encourages them to dig deeper into the meaning by meditating on the Koan again. The purpose of this process is to increase the doubt in the mind of the student so that when they do succeed in penetrating the Koan, they experience an “Ah-ha” moment. This experience is the enlightenment or awakening. The experience is unique to each individual and also the same process for everyone. The experience of enlightenment, awakening and insight are available to everyone.
Meditating with the Koan creates a feedback loop in the brain. The process of working with a Zen Master is a feedback loop. Karma is the cycle of causality. Experiencing feedback loops is a key part of the process.
The Sound of One Hand Clapping
To describe the next steps in the process, here is the Hakuin Koan again: “You know the sound of two hands clapping; tell me, what is the sound of one hand?”
The student is presented with a Koan that has specific boundaries and then sent away to meditate on it. Returning to the zen master, the student gives their resolution or response. The zen master dismisses them to try again. This increases the pressure and doubt in the mind of the student.
After meditating, and with many pauses not considering the Koan, to let the subconscious process the koan, the student begins to realize that the koan is about duality. The first part is about what we know and the second about what we don't know. The first part is about a sound and the second about non-sound. The student considers that the koan is also about other dualities: good and bad, right and wrong. The left hand and the right hand are symbols for duality in the first part of the sentence. The koan is a metaphor. Returning to the zen master, the student gives their resolution or response. The zen master dismisses them to try again. This increases the pressure and doubt in the mind of the student.
The accumulation of pressure is a key part of the process. In System Dynamics, we know that a feedback loop includes at least one accumulation. As the pressure builds inside the student, their subconscious becomes more engaged in the struggle to resolve the Koan. The feedback loop between the subconscious and the conscious mind has an increase in the flow due to the increased pressure. The student begins to practice insight.
After meditating more, thinking and processing various aspects of duality, the subconscious mind presents the idea that the koan is about how two becomes one. The student experiences a feeling of awakening to a new perspective about the Koan. When do two hands become one? Two different people become a couple, a family. Two hands together become a prayer symbol. The student thinks of various physical examples of how two becomes one. Returning to the zen master, the student gives their resolution or response. The zen master dismisses them to try again. This increases the pressure and doubt in the mind of the student.
The Three Pillars
After meditating on the Koan again, pausing and letting the subconscious process the recent thinking, the student realizes that western logic, the scientific method and math require that one plus one always equal two. This Zen Koan is about how one and one become one. Instead of using logic and thinking, with the conscious mind, the student uses the concentration and focus of meditation to tap into the subconscious mind. The student begins to surface non-physical examples of how one and one become one, how many can become one.
Returning to the zen master, the student gives their resolution or response. The zen master dismisses them to try again. This increases the pressure and doubt in the mind of the student. Great doubt leads to great faith. Determination is required to keep moving ahead with this Koan. Doubt, faith and determination are the three pillars of Zen. The Koan tests a student’s capacity to experience great doubt and whether they experience great faith as a result. The Koan is a test of a student’s determination.
Repeating the Process
After meditating on the koan again, and on the various levels of understanding described above. After pauses to let the subconscious process thoughts, the student comes to a new level of realization, another awakening: the experience of examining the koan using meditation is a process. The Koan isn’t repeated in order to meditate. Meditation is the process used to penetrate the Koan. The process of examining the koan is a way of discovering insight and how to practice insight. The steps in the process begin with the Koan as an object separate from the subject (the student). The physical possibilities are explored, assumptions are made, and thinking is applied unsuccessfully to come to a solution. The duality of subject and object is discovered and explored. Metaphors are considered as other possible explanations.
The student recognizes the process of using meditation to access the subconscious mind so that the conscious thinking, logical, physical world are available to the whole brain and body. The student begins to own the Koan so that it is no longer an object separate from the subject. The student becomes one with the Koan. The student examines the process as a way of practicing insight. Returning to the zen master, the student gives their resolution or response. The zen master dismisses them to try again. This increases the pressure and doubt in the mind of the student.
After meditating on the process of examining the koan as a way to practice insight, the student awakens to the process of practicing insight about insight: meta-insight. Meditation becomes an awakening about how two becomes one. Two parts of the brain work together as one. The brain and body work together as one. A way of examining anything becomes available to the student. Instead of the spiritual and secular world being separate, they are one. Subject and object become one. Returning to the zen master, the student gives their resolution or response. The zen master dismisses them to try again. This increases the pressure and doubt in the mind of the student.
Finally, the Koan becomes nothing, nonsense and useless to an enlightened person who has awakened to the process of being able to connect their subconscious with their conscious mind in a feedback loop. The subconscious mind is the sensing, feeling and non-verbal brain. The conscious mind is the thinking, logical and verbal brain.
Beginning at the conscious level, the student gathers evidence and considers the relevance, consequences and various actions. Meditation and pauses allow time for the subconscious mind to process. The student experiences an awakening or realization or surprise awareness that gives them an insight and they progress to the next level in the process. Then the feedback loop starts again. The conscious mind examines the new evidence, considers the relevance, examines the possible consequences and imagines various actions. Meditation and pauses allow time for the subconscious mind to process the new information. Again the student experiences an awakening, a sudden realization or a surprise awareness that offers them an insight to progress to another level in the process. Finally the student goes to the Zen Master and demonstrates to the zen master that they have experienced awakening, enlightenment and practiced insight. The Koan means nothing to them anymore.
The Zen Master gives them another Koan to consider and the process begins again. In every Koan, the student faces the problem of penetrating through the surface of the words and their multiple meanings to the fundamental lesson. In every Koan, the dilemma emerges of how to express in words what is supposedly not found in words.
Summary of Zen Koan Process
Practice with a Koan that has specific boundaries until the student becomes one with the Koan. The student embodies the basics.
Experience the dynamic working. Realize the dynamic activity in everything.
Use language to express what is “not found in words.” Communicate in language about experience.
Penetrate a few complex Koans completely to experience the three steps together: the basics, dynamics and communicating. This throws the student back into doubt to repeat the first three steps within one Koan.
Finally, the student is ready to practice in daily life by helping others. Compassion for others is aroused and cultivated. The student is given the assignment of summarizing everything they have learned. They become an ordinary person serving others.
What Really Happens
Except that the process is not as clean and easy as described here. There are setbacks, doubt and non-progress as the student attempts to resolve the unresolvable Koan. The Zen Master gives the student a Koan without any instructions and encourages the student in ways to create doubt. The Zen Master rejects all solutions and resolutions proposed by the student. The Zen Master presents the student with more questions, checking questions, to continue to create doubt in the student's mind.
As the pressure on the student builds, as time passes, the Zen Master might give the student a hint to help them progress to the next level. But the student must experience the awakening and can only do that after great doubt has been created. From this great doubt, the awakening springs fully formed. As the student experiences each sudden awakening, they are practicing insight. With continued practice of insight, they awaken to the process of practicing insight. With repeated practice using the process steps with each Koan, they awaken to how to access the feedback loop between conscious and subconscious mind, between mind and body, so that two becomes one.
Everything Happens for a Reason
Believing that everything happens for a reason is the modern version of the old religious saying: “It’s God’s will.” The modern alternative is to believe that everything is left to chance and accidents. However, as Albert Einstein said many times in different ways, “God doesn't play dice with the world.”
Zen and System Dynamics present an alternative, a third way: Everything happens because of feedback loops.
Jay Forrester has written extensively about how to start with basic concepts about systems. In particular, how to start with teaching students in K12 schools about system dynamics. His key concept is that all activity everywhere occurs within and is controlled by feedback loops.
Forrester has written:
People seldom realize the pervasive existence of feedback loops in driving everything that changes through time.
We live in a complex of nested feedback loops.
In systems composed of many interacting feedback loops and long time delays, causes of an observed symptom may come from an entirely different part of the system and lie far back in time.
The Zen Koans and SD process are designed to guide students through the many steps and levels of learning how to understand feedback loops in complex systems. Practicing insight, the student understands that everything happens because of feedback loops.
System Dynamics
Another basic concept Forrester has written about is recognizing that models and simulations are a part of every day thinking. We all use models and simulations for every decision. These are called mental models. Formal simulation models make our assumptions explicit. They help to make our thinking precise, clarify ambiguities and identify gaps in logical structure. A beginning SD student is given a particular model to exercise and runs multiple simulations on the computer. The student comes to the exercise with mental models already formed in their mind about how the real world works. They compare their mental models with the models on the computer.
Doubt is created the more often a student exercises a model and finds that their prior mental model does not align with the results of the computer model. They begin to have little “Ah-ha” moments and start to awaken to the power of understanding feedback. They begin to understand that feedback loops are why systems behave the way they do. The process takes many repetitions with multiple exercises over a nine month school year working with a trained instructor.
In every SD generic structure, the student faces the problem of penetrating through the surface of the symbols in the model and their multiple meanings to the fundamental lesson. In every SD generic structure, the dilemma emerges of how to express in words what is supposedly not found in words because the model uses symbols.
Summary of System Dynamics Process
This is a summary of the process and has more detailed steps, plus each step is recursive.
Define and Articulate the Problem
Formulate a Model
Test the Model
Design and Evaluate Policies
Make Learning Available (communicate)
The SD student must practice with standard exercises given to them by their instructor who has already studied the generic structures. Each repetition of the process listed above with each generic structure is like the Zen student returning again to the Koan after checking with the Zen Master. The SD student must experience for themselves the way feedback loops work in systems by running multiple simulations on the computer. Teachers help them build their SD skills based on this process.
SD students practice gaining insight into why systems behave the way they do. To move to a higher level, SD students follow a process to identify a problem to model, test, develop policies and communicate. When the SD student (who might be a teacher planning to teach SD to their students) has completed sufficient course work, they move to a higher level of understanding about feedback loops and insight. At even a higher level, practicing SD involves metacognition, learning about learning and being able to see feedback loops in systems everywhere.
The training in SD is designed to encourage communicating about systems to create feedback loops with others. At the highest levels, practicing SD involves teaching and being of service to others. But there is another mountain beyond the last mountain.
Summary
Learning is an experience that happens because of feedback loops. When a K12 teacher first begins the experience of teaching SD to their students, then they really start to learn feedback loops and dynamic modeling. That is a mountain beyond the last mountain.
Zen and SD are difficult to explain to someone in words. They have to be experienced. To penetrate Zen and SD at a deeper level, the graduate student must go about their daily life, and attempt to communicate with others about the feedback loops that can not be discovered with our five senses. How do you use language to communicate about something that has to be experienced?
Summary Zen and System Dynamics are about experiencing:
Creating and understanding feedback loops by identifying accumulations and flows.
Understanding dynamic systems based on multiple feedback loops
Building mental models and change mental models
Practicing insight
Creating a communication feedback loop with an instructor who has mastered the art
Using case studies with boundaries (Koans and generic structures) to learn the process of how to practice insight
Learning how to use intuition to figure out why systems behave the way they do
How to use mental models with feedback loops to understand how the real world works
Understanding how two different things, an accumulation and a flow, connect to become one feedback loop.
Understanding that when you believe you have resolved a dilemma, there is another level of understanding when studying a system because complex systems have emerging behaviors, shifting loop dominance and other surprises.
Develop the habits of mind to experience the real world of natural systems.
Finally, the student is ready to practice in daily life by helping others understand feedback loops in systems.
References to be added later. This is a first draft.
Once, I wrote online about Zen and System Dynamics (SD) having things in common. Another writer commented that Zen was an ancient mystical cult that had nothing to do with SD and criticized me for giving SD a bad reputation by suggesting they had anything in common.
Even though experts spent decades teaching System Dynamics to K12 teachers, promoting SD for education and talking to many people about feedback loops, SD remains an academic exercise outside the mainstream, or hidden behind consultants closed doors focused on business process improvement. SD is criticized as not being used or useful in engineering or science.
Below, I have written about my experience with Zen and System Dynamics, but reading this will not mean that you understand either one. You have to experience System Dynamics and Zen for yourself before they mean anything to you. My description of Zen and Koans is not meant to represent their true nature. This is not about Buddhism or any other religion.
The description of Zen that follows is a beginner’s perception, like someone from the outside looking in. By focusing only on the beginner level, this description becomes stuck there in a condition that Zen calls “a worm in the mud.”
The purpose of Koans in Zen and generic structures in SD is strictly pedagogical. A student grapples with a Koan or a generic structure by following a process guided by a trained instructor.
The problem I will address is a lack of understanding of the dynamic processes in the world around us and within ourselves. The purpose of this article is to provide evidence of what Zen and System Dynamics have in common. In the process of describing Zen and SD, experts in SD will find support for teaching SD to others.
The Zen of System Dynamics
Like Zen, System Dynamics is difficult to define. They share many things in common.
While they do not dispense completely with words and writing, Zen and System Dynamics have no dependence on words. System Dynamics models use levels and flows shown as rectangles and pipes on the computer. These are the only two concepts needed to understand why systems work the way they do (Forrester, 1996).
Zen passes from mind to mind outside the approved curriculum, culture and doctrines. System Dynamics also has a history of passing from mind to mind outside the approved curriculum in K12 education. Education reform culture and doctrines require standardized tests, teacher evaluations based on test scores and for-profit education companies. System Dynamics has been taught to K12 teachers outside the approved University curriculum for teachers by those who have mastered the concepts as taught to them by the international experts in System Dynamics.
Zen points directly at the mind. Zen Koans engage the minds of students to resolve a dilemma. System Dynamics points directly at the mental models each of us has in our mind of how we believe the real world works and compares this to dynamic model simulations on a computer. System Dynamics engages the minds of students to resolve the conflict between their own mental model and results of the computer simulations.
Zen is a way of practicing insight to improve our capacity and ability to resolve real dilemmas and live an authentic life. System Dynamics is a way of practicing insight to improve our capacity and ability to communicate our mental models, computer simulation results, and conclusions and decisions to others. Miscommunication results from incongruent communication by one or more parties to a conversation when their mental model does not align with their words or the mental models of others. System Dynamics resolves these dilemmas by engaging everyone in meta-communication about the conflict between the mental models and computer models.
Zen teachings are communicated using short stories and epigrams. Hakuin Ekaku (January 19, 1686 - January 18, 1768) was one of the most influential figures in Japanese Zen Buddhism. Here is the Koan he originated:
“You know the sound of two hands clapping; tell me, what is the sound of one hand?”
The student has no dependence on any other words, writing or instruction. The Koan is outside the public education curriculum. The epigram points directly at the mind of the student.
Dynamic models of systems do not depend on any other words or instruction. The dynamic model is outside the public education curriculum that is focused on standardized test results. A model is an epigram in symbols that points directly at the mind of the observer.
A System Dynamics Koan might be:
You know how a bathtub works; tell me, how does self-esteem work?
The System Dynamics student has to identify their mental model of how a bathtub works. If they haven’t already, they build a dynamic model and simulate a bathtub. They research how a bathtub works and enter the proper assumptions and equations into the model. They communicate the results and receive feedback. They repeat their steps until they resolve the dilemma of the differences between their mental model and how a bathtub actually works based on a valid and verified dynamic model simulated on the computer. Just like in Zen, learning happens when the student changes their mental model.
This takes a lot of inner work. Just like in Zen, the focus is on what is going on in the mind. Seeing the mental model align with the computer simulation model, so that the student changes their mental model, is like the “Ah-ha!” moment in Zen when a student gains insight into a Koan.
Understanding a Koan requires digging deeper and thinking beyond the words. Understanding a System Dynamics model requires finding balancing and reinforcing feedback loops, shifting loop dominance and time delays. Understanding a Koan or a dynamic model requires insight that does not depend on words, is transmitted outside the standard curriculum and points directly to the mind.
Insight into how the mind works is the path to enlightenment in Zen. Insight, into how to change our mental models using dynamic model simulations on the computer, is the path to learning using System Dynamics.
Beginning
In the beginning, a Zen student repeats the Koan about the sound of one hand clapping over and over again during mediation to focus the mind and body. They use their thinking ability and physical abilities to move their hands to make motions and find out what sounds they can make with one hand. This phase of research can be very creative and entertaining when others participate. The Zen student takes the plain meaning of the words, the literal meaning, to assume that the resolution is a sound and something we hear. The student attempts to guess the one and only one solution. Returning to the Zen master, the student gives their resolution or response. The Zen master dismisses them to try again. This creates doubt in the mind of the student.
A beginning System Dynamics student makes repeated attempts to model a simple system, with specific boundaries, that is a generic structure. They use their thinking and analytical abilities and skills to create a model on the computer and run simulations to get the system to behave in a particular dynamic way as represented by a graph of the results of key variables. The student attempts to complete the assignment so that they get the one correct answer. However a beginning student will struggle with understanding why they are studying SD and why modeling is used. The student comes to the assignment with assumptions and mental models of how things work in the real world. Comparing the modeling of a generic structure to their mental models, they have doubts about whether this has anything to do with the real world.
Koans and Generic Structures
A Koan is a case study that includes an opportunity to focus on duality. When two things are opposite or different, this creates the opportunity to consider how or in what circumstances they might become one. When does one and one become one? This is the common theme in many Koans.
A generic structure, with well defined boundaries, is a case study in System Dynamics that includes an opportunity to focus on feedback loops. When cause and effect are connected then a link between an accumulation and a flow is included in the model that represents a type of feedback found in the real world. In SD, cause and effect become one feedback loop.
The purpose of Koans and generic structures is strictly pedagogical. A student grapples with a Koan or a generic structure, each with well defined boundaries, by following a process guided by a trained instructor.
The Wild Fox Koan
The Wild Fox Koan is an influential Koan story in the Zen tradition dating back as early as 1036 and republished many times since then. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_fox_koan ) In the Koan a student asks, “Does a person who practices with great devotion still fall into cause and effect?” (There are mystical or religious aspects to the story not relevant to our comparison with System Dynamics that will be left out of what follows.)
In the story, a monk answers incorrectly, “No, such a person does not.” After a long time, he asks another monk, "Does a person who practices with great devotion still fall into cause and effect?" And the second monk said, "Don't ignore cause and effect."
A student of the second monk, upon hearing the story, asked, “What if he hadn't given a wrong answer?" The second monk asks the student to approach him, "Come closer and I will tell you." But when the student came closer, the student slapped the monk’s face. Laughing, the monk clapped his hands and said, "I thought it was only barbarians who had unusual beards. But you too have an unusual beard!"
The Wild Fox Koan has many layers within the boundaries of the problem. This is a complex story to unpack, examine and then view as a whole. One thousand years ago, humans did not understand why things happened in the world around them and why humans behaved they way they did in the same detailed ways that we do today. They understood cause and effect, action and reaction. For them this was the simplest explanation for why things happened.
The first lesson is that no matter how devoted you are in your beliefs, you can not ignore cause and effect. Every culture has this basic lesson in their history. For example, “what goes around comes around” or “reap what one sows” or karma. So far this seems like an easy story to understand. However, every student of Zen learns early that duality is a common theme in Koans.
The key word here is “and” because Koans do not say cause “or” effect, they always use “and” to link two words that are opposites. For example, good and bad, right and wrong, birth and death. Koans are a way to create doubt in the mind of the student in order to increase the pressure on them to dig deeper into the meaning of the Koan. By using opposites, the Koan is designed to increase the doubt to the highest level possible.
Self-regulating mechanisms existed at the time Koans were first created and when they were first recorded. Today, we have a word for the combined action of cause and effect. We use the term feedback. Monks used the sound of two hands clapping and a slap on the face to represent the combined action of cause and effect. A question often asked by Zen Masters focuses the student’s attention on two words and asks how they can become one thing. In this case, cause and effect become one feedback loop.
For the ordinary person, the Koan has two conflicting views of causality: falling into cause and effect, or not falling into cause and effect. We all dream of being free from cause and effect and act as if we are separate from cause and effect. But when a person awakens to their true nature, we see the oneness of cause and effect and do not ignore the functioning of cause and effect by imagining cause and effect are two separate things. Thus awakened persons neither "fall into" nor do they "not fall into" cause and effect, they experience cause and effect as one thing: feedback. And because they are one with cause and effect, they do not ignore cause and effect - meaning they do not ignore the feedback loops in natural systems.
The Process
This intellectual and analytical description of the Koan is not a resolution of the Wild Fox Koan, and not a solution nor an answer. Zen is an experience. The experience has been called enlightenment, awakening, a sudden insight, a flash of intuition and many other metaphors. In this way, Zen does not depend on words. Using words does not substitute for the actual experience of meditating using a Koan.
When a student is given the Koan, like Wild Fox or The Sound of One Hand Clapping, they return each time to the Zen Master. The Zen Master listens to the student’s response to the Koan then sends them away to reconsider, and he encourages them to dig deeper into the meaning by meditating on the Koan again. The purpose of this process is to increase the doubt in the mind of the student so that when they do succeed in penetrating the Koan, they experience an “Ah-ha” moment. This experience is the enlightenment or awakening. The experience is unique to each individual and also the same process for everyone. The experience of enlightenment, awakening and insight are available to everyone.
Meditating with the Koan creates a feedback loop in the brain. The process of working with a Zen Master is a feedback loop. Karma is the cycle of causality. Experiencing feedback loops is a key part of the process.
The Sound of One Hand Clapping
To describe the next steps in the process, here is the Hakuin Koan again:
“You know the sound of two hands clapping; tell me, what is the sound of one hand?”
The student is presented with a Koan that has specific boundaries and then sent away to meditate on it. Returning to the zen master, the student gives their resolution or response. The zen master dismisses them to try again. This increases the pressure and doubt in the mind of the student.
After meditating, and with many pauses not considering the Koan, to let the subconscious process the koan, the student begins to realize that the koan is about duality. The first part is about what we know and the second about what we don't know. The first part is about a sound and the second about non-sound. The student considers that the koan is also about other dualities: good and bad, right and wrong. The left hand and the right hand are symbols for duality in the first part of the sentence. The koan is a metaphor. Returning to the zen master, the student gives their resolution or response. The zen master dismisses them to try again. This increases the pressure and doubt in the mind of the student.
The accumulation of pressure is a key part of the process. In System Dynamics, we know that a feedback loop includes at least one accumulation. As the pressure builds inside the student, their subconscious becomes more engaged in the struggle to resolve the Koan. The feedback loop between the subconscious and the conscious mind has an increase in the flow due to the increased pressure. The student begins to practice insight.
After meditating more, thinking and processing various aspects of duality, the subconscious mind presents the idea that the koan is about how two becomes one. The student experiences a feeling of awakening to a new perspective about the Koan. When do two hands become one? Two different people become a couple, a family. Two hands together become a prayer symbol. The student thinks of various physical examples of how two becomes one. Returning to the zen master, the student gives their resolution or response. The zen master dismisses them to try again. This increases the pressure and doubt in the mind of the student.
The Three Pillars
After meditating on the Koan again, pausing and letting the subconscious process the recent thinking, the student realizes that western logic, the scientific method and math require that one plus one always equal two. This Zen Koan is about how one and one become one. Instead of using logic and thinking, with the conscious mind, the student uses the concentration and focus of meditation to tap into the subconscious mind. The student begins to surface non-physical examples of how one and one become one, how many can become one.
Returning to the zen master, the student gives their resolution or response. The zen master dismisses them to try again. This increases the pressure and doubt in the mind of the student. Great doubt leads to great faith. Determination is required to keep moving ahead with this Koan. Doubt, faith and determination are the three pillars of Zen. The Koan tests a student’s capacity to experience great doubt and whether they experience great faith as a result. The Koan is a test of a student’s determination.
Repeating the Process
After meditating on the koan again, and on the various levels of understanding described above. After pauses to let the subconscious process thoughts, the student comes to a new level of realization, another awakening: the experience of examining the koan using meditation is a process. The Koan isn’t repeated in order to meditate. Meditation is the process used to penetrate the Koan. The process of examining the koan is a way of discovering insight and how to practice insight. The steps in the process begin with the Koan as an object separate from the subject (the student). The physical possibilities are explored, assumptions are made, and thinking is applied unsuccessfully to come to a solution. The duality of subject and object is discovered and explored. Metaphors are considered as other possible explanations.
The student recognizes the process of using meditation to access the subconscious mind so that the conscious thinking, logical, physical world are available to the whole brain and body. The student begins to own the Koan so that it is no longer an object separate from the subject. The student becomes one with the Koan. The student examines the process as a way of practicing insight. Returning to the zen master, the student gives their resolution or response. The zen master dismisses them to try again. This increases the pressure and doubt in the mind of the student.
After meditating on the process of examining the koan as a way to practice insight, the student awakens to the process of practicing insight about insight: meta-insight. Meditation becomes an awakening about how two becomes one. Two parts of the brain work together as one. The brain and body work together as one. A way of examining anything becomes available to the student. Instead of the spiritual and secular world being separate, they are one. Subject and object become one. Returning to the zen master, the student gives their resolution or response. The zen master dismisses them to try again. This increases the pressure and doubt in the mind of the student.
Finally, the Koan becomes nothing, nonsense and useless to an enlightened person who has awakened to the process of being able to connect their subconscious with their conscious mind in a feedback loop. The subconscious mind is the sensing, feeling and non-verbal brain. The conscious mind is the thinking, logical and verbal brain.
Beginning at the conscious level, the student gathers evidence and considers the relevance, consequences and various actions. Meditation and pauses allow time for the subconscious mind to process. The student experiences an awakening or realization or surprise awareness that gives them an insight and they progress to the next level in the process. Then the feedback loop starts again. The conscious mind examines the new evidence, considers the relevance, examines the possible consequences and imagines various actions. Meditation and pauses allow time for the subconscious mind to process the new information. Again the student experiences an awakening, a sudden realization or a surprise awareness that offers them an insight to progress to another level in the process. Finally the student goes to the Zen Master and demonstrates to the zen master that they have experienced awakening, enlightenment and practiced insight. The Koan means nothing to them anymore.
The Zen Master gives them another Koan to consider and the process begins again. In every Koan, the student faces the problem of penetrating through the surface of the words and their multiple meanings to the fundamental lesson. In every Koan, the dilemma emerges of how to express in words what is supposedly not found in words.
Summary of Zen Koan Process
What Really Happens
Except that the process is not as clean and easy as described here. There are setbacks, doubt and non-progress as the student attempts to resolve the unresolvable Koan. The Zen Master gives the student a Koan without any instructions and encourages the student in ways to create doubt. The Zen Master rejects all solutions and resolutions proposed by the student. The Zen Master presents the student with more questions, checking questions, to continue to create doubt in the student's mind.
As the pressure on the student builds, as time passes, the Zen Master might give the student a hint to help them progress to the next level. But the student must experience the awakening and can only do that after great doubt has been created. From this great doubt, the awakening springs fully formed. As the student experiences each sudden awakening, they are practicing insight. With continued practice of insight, they awaken to the process of practicing insight. With repeated practice using the process steps with each Koan, they awaken to how to access the feedback loop between conscious and subconscious mind, between mind and body, so that two becomes one.
Everything Happens for a Reason
Believing that everything happens for a reason is the modern version of the old religious saying: “It’s God’s will.” The modern alternative is to believe that everything is left to chance and accidents. However, as Albert Einstein said many times in different ways, “God doesn't play dice with the world.”
Zen and System Dynamics present an alternative, a third way: Everything happens because of feedback loops.
Jay Forrester has written extensively about how to start with basic concepts about systems. In particular, how to start with teaching students in K12 schools about system dynamics. His key concept is that all activity everywhere occurs within and is controlled by feedback loops.
Forrester has written:
The Zen Koans and SD process are designed to guide students through the many steps and levels of learning how to understand feedback loops in complex systems. Practicing insight, the student understands that everything happens because of feedback loops.
System Dynamics
Another basic concept Forrester has written about is recognizing that models and simulations are a part of every day thinking. We all use models and simulations for every decision. These are called mental models. Formal simulation models make our assumptions explicit. They help to make our thinking precise, clarify ambiguities and identify gaps in logical structure. A beginning SD student is given a particular model to exercise and runs multiple simulations on the computer. The student comes to the exercise with mental models already formed in their mind about how the real world works. They compare their mental models with the models on the computer.
Doubt is created the more often a student exercises a model and finds that their prior mental model does not align with the results of the computer model. They begin to have little “Ah-ha” moments and start to awaken to the power of understanding feedback. They begin to understand that feedback loops are why systems behave the way they do. The process takes many repetitions with multiple exercises over a nine month school year working with a trained instructor.
In every SD generic structure, the student faces the problem of penetrating through the surface of the symbols in the model and their multiple meanings to the fundamental lesson. In every SD generic structure, the dilemma emerges of how to express in words what is supposedly not found in words because the model uses symbols.
Summary of System Dynamics Process
This is a summary of the process and has more detailed steps, plus each step is recursive.
The SD student must practice with standard exercises given to them by their instructor who has already studied the generic structures. Each repetition of the process listed above with each generic structure is like the Zen student returning again to the Koan after checking with the Zen Master. The SD student must experience for themselves the way feedback loops work in systems by running multiple simulations on the computer. Teachers help them build their SD skills based on this process.
SD students practice gaining insight into why systems behave the way they do. To move to a higher level, SD students follow a process to identify a problem to model, test, develop policies and communicate. When the SD student (who might be a teacher planning to teach SD to their students) has completed sufficient course work, they move to a higher level of understanding about feedback loops and insight. At even a higher level, practicing SD involves metacognition, learning about learning and being able to see feedback loops in systems everywhere.
The training in SD is designed to encourage communicating about systems to create feedback loops with others. At the highest levels, practicing SD involves teaching and being of service to others. But there is another mountain beyond the last mountain.
Summary
Learning is an experience that happens because of feedback loops. When a K12 teacher first begins the experience of teaching SD to their students, then they really start to learn feedback loops and dynamic modeling. That is a mountain beyond the last mountain.
Zen and SD are difficult to explain to someone in words. They have to be experienced. To penetrate Zen and SD at a deeper level, the graduate student must go about their daily life, and attempt to communicate with others about the feedback loops that can not be discovered with our five senses. How do you use language to communicate about something that has to be experienced?
Summary
Zen and System Dynamics are about experiencing:
References to be added later.
This is a first draft.